A Study Guide for Alberto Rios's "Island of the Three Marias"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Alberto Rios's "Island of the Three Marias," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535826242

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Island of the Three Marias

Alberto Ríos

1985

Introduction

Although Island of the Three Marias refers to a real geographic place, the poem draws on the literary tradition of islands as locales of the exotic and the fantastic. Umberto Eco’s Island of the Day Before and H. G. Wells’ Island of Dr. Moreau are two well-known examples in this tradition. Ríos’ poem appears in the second section of his 1985 collection, Five Indiscretions. The collection as a whole addresses themes of gender, sexuality, and desire, and the section in which Island of the Three Marias appears deals with representations of masculinity and martyrdom. The poem, consisting of six free verse stanzas—alternating quatrains and longer stanzas—presents brief descriptions about three men who live on one of Las Islas Marias (The Mary Islands), a group of four islands that are ninety miles off the southwestern coast of Mazatlán, Mexico. Although readers are not explicitly told, the men are either convicts or employees of Islas Marias Federal Prison, which was established on the largest island, Maria Madre, in